Health breakthroughs will be welcomed by so many

INFERTITLITY and cancer have become two of the major preoccupations of our time.

PUBLISHED: 00:00, Mon, Apr 13, 2009

Failure to conceive a child and women’s concern about the clash between career and body clock are sources of anxiety and conflict; cancer is the most feared and frequently the most painful of diseases.

To have real news of potential scientific breakthroughs in both makes it a happy day.

The news about cancer is the simpler and more immediate. Scientists in California have developed a technology that may soon allow diagnosis and monitoring of progress from a tiny drop of blood or a speck of tissue.

Anyone who has experienced, in person or by proxy, the current procedures for biopsy and monitoring will know how trying they can be. the disease is distressing enough in itself.

Obviously anything that improves chances of recovery and survival is enormously welcome. Breakthroughs in stem-cell research that could one day make menopause a thing of the past and allow women to have children later is, of course, altogether more controversial.

Quite apart from issues surrounding stem cells, the thought of rescheduling the stages of women’s life is found disturbing by some.

But properly and sensibly done, is it so disturbing?

In the course of the past century life expectancy, health levels and the organisation of our society have been transformed.

Many changes that seemed horrifying are now commonplace. We must not simply be led wherever science takes us but neither should we close our minds to the thought of advances that would decrease anxiety and add to the sum of human happiness.